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The Importance of Good Web Design

A bad web design can date you, as easily as avocado green tiles date an old-fashioned bathroom. Home buyers, like website customers, look for the most current designs when they are looking to purchase a home, and for online visitors to your website looking to make a purchase, each page on your website is like a new room they are entering in the tour of that home. It needs to be tastefully decorated and modern enough to wow them. To take a look at what makes a good web design, you might want to check out some award winners at webaward.org. The WebAwards is given out by the Web Marketing Association based on seven design criteria, which include design, content, copywriting, use of technology, innovation, interactivity, and ease of use.

What Makes a Good Design?

From a personal point of view, a good web design is one that your particular audience finds appealing. However, from a structural point of view, a good web design is one that looks good no matter what device is being used to browse it. There are a few elements that are common in today’s designs that meet both a personal appeal while paying attention to structural requirements. They are:

Simple Navigation Menus – Embedded menu structures can make it hard to find a specific page of interest. Search functionality also is available for someone who doesn’t want to deal with menus. Complicated menus are particularly hard to navigate with a fat thumb on a smartphone. That’s why simpler menu structures are more functional as well.

Flat or Semi-Flat Design – Design elements like shadows or embossing can be distracting for users who prefer a more minimalistic approach. A flat design can also refer to a layout that scrolls rather than navigates via navigation buttons, as swiping is far easier than clicking on small devices. Not only is this more visually simple, but the pages tend to load faster using a flat design.

Large Visual Elements – Images and videos are important in modern design as people prefer to listen to a video on their devices that try to read tiny text. A video can take the place of a homepage to provide an instant introduction in a dynamic way that text cannot do. Pictures can grab more attention and are easily sharable on places like Pinterest and Instagram, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

Good Web Design Draws Attention and Traffic

Good web designs don’t just win awards, they also draw tons of traffic. That traffic is the lifeblood of any business and can be converted to dollars at the end of the sales funnel. When the content on your site is attractive as well as compelling, it becomes easy to attract more customers and gives your business long-range stability.